Process for implementing a switched full-duplex ethernet type communication network with redundancy

1. A process for implementing a redundant switched full-duplex Ethernet type communication network including at least two independent elementary networks, each elementary network including at least one source subscriber equipment and at least one destination subscriber equipment, connected to each other through at least one physical link through at least one switch, each equipment being connected to each of these elementary networks, the process comprising:

performing a frame by frame redundancy on each elementary network, wherein the performing the frame by frame redundancy includes:

transmitting frames on the elementary network;

receiving the transmitted frames on the elementary network;

limiting the transfer time from a source equipment to one or more destination equipment; and

determining, using a static configuration table, the virtual links that each switch is required to switch and an allowable number of packets for a virtual link.

2. A process according to claim 1 , wherein there are two elementary networks.

3. A process according to claim 1 , wherein a virtual link provides a link from the source equipment to the at least one destination equipment.

4. A process according to claim 3 , wherein a virtual link number is accepted in the numbering field.

5. A process according to claim 3 , wherein the virtual link has:

a transfer direction, the virtual link being single directional; a fixed passband; a maximum guaranteed time for transfer of packets from the source equipment to the destination equipment; a fixed path on the network; and a unique identifier.

6. The process according to claim 5 implementing a service for protection of a passband in the switch, which for each incoming virtual link is capable of checking time characteristics of packets, the packets being destroyed if allowable time characteristics are exceeded.

7. The process according to claim 3 , wherein the steps used in the subscriber equipment and applied by a virtual link onto the network are such that:

in transmission, for each frame received from a communication stack:

adding a numbering field so that a counter numbers the frame corresponding to each virtual link, and

sending the frame onto the elementary networks;

in reception, for each frame assigned to a virtual link:

storing the frame number, and

accepting the frame if the frame number has not already been received, and if it has been received, destroying the frame.

8. The process according to claim 7 , wherein the same frame number can be used for two different virtual links.

9. The process according to claim 3 , wherein the implementation of several services in each subscriber equipment includes:

a transmission service, the role of which is to enable an application to access virtual links in transmission, wherein this service multiplexes virtual links towards a physical link through an Ethernet interface, and for each virtual link sends packets as a function of the passband allocated to the virtual link, and

a reception service that decodes frames, checks the format of the frame and makes useful data available to applications.

10. The process according to claim 9 , wherein the application treats each virtual link as a queue.

11. A process according to claim 1 used for implementation of a redundant switched full-duplex Ethernet type communication network in avionics.

12. The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

adding a numbering field in each frame transmitted through the switch to insert a frame number so that each frame is identifiable in time.

13. The process according to claim 12 , further comprising:

sending each identifiable frame with the added numbering field on each of the elementary networks.

14. The process according to claim 12 , further comprising:

storing a received frame number that was added to a sent frame.

15. The process according to claim 14 , further comprising:

accepting the received frame only within a predetermined time window if its frame number has not already been received during the predetermined time window.

16. The process according to claim 15 , wherein the at least one source subscriber equipment and the at least one destination subscriber equipment are connected to each other through the at least one physical link through at least two switches which are interconnected to each other and each connected to at least one subscriber equipment.